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 The struggle to understand and to cure cancer has consumed medical researchers throughout the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. Mukherjee takes a thorough in-depth look at cancer throughout history in this biography of an illness, where the disease is often visualized as a crab scurrying and burrowing away from all reach of therapy. The author adds his own experience to a years-long study of cancer to provide a definitive, insightful book on the way this illness has gripped our modern day lives.
I think almost everyone I know has lost someone near and dear to them to cancer. I have; my brother died at only eighteen from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. If anything, the fact that we’ve all been touched by this horrible illness in its many incarnations makes a book like The Emperor of All Maladies an even more important read. Reading this book was always going to be difficult, but it is on a subject I wanted to understand. After it won the Pulitzer Prize, and unending praise from many of my favorite bloggers, I simply had to read it, no matter how uncomfortable the subject matter.
I’m really glad I made that choice, because this book was excellent in so many ways. Mukherjee skilfully weaves together his own years treating cancer patients, ensuring that we get an up close and personal view of what it’s like to fight cancer today, with a thorough history of the illness, including its ancient manifestations, early treatments, and continuing right up to the medicines and techniques used to treat various kinds of cancer today. I learned so much from this book, certainly things I never even thought about, like how the War on Cancer got started in the first place, what the Jimmy Fund is, and so on.
I’d also never really understood anything about the biology of cancer. I knew the disease was basically uncontrollable cell division, but Mukherjee goes into depth without becoming confusing or using any jargon that an ordinary reader can’t understand.
While doing all this, he also succeeds in matching the struggle against cancer alongside current events, explaining how certain developments happened and why. I felt like I was getting the full story from all possible angles, which I so appreciated, and so thorough a look that I don’t think I really need to read another book. Adding in the perspectives of his modern patients just demonstrated the strength of the human spirit and the difficulties of treatment.
This truly is a biography; in many ways Mukherjee makes cancer itself a visible part of the book. Cancer is our normal body functions turned inside out and made virulent – and immortal. It’s a surprisingly fascinating read which has really enhanced my understanding of everything to do with cancer. I’d highly recommend The Emperor of All Maladies to almost anyone.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review from Amazon Vine.
 The affair between Adele Hugo, Victor Hugo’s wife, and Charles Saint-Beuve has gone down in history as a mistake made by everyone; a doomed love affair that simply never should have started. Chock full of details that only history can make believeable, like Saint-Beuve’s hermaphroditism and cross-dressing, and the intoxicating world of 19th century France, the book is really a love story about two people who have made mistakes but have never ceased longing for one another.
I knew I wanted to read another book by Humphreys after Coventry and she certainly hasn’t let me down here. The book is short, but it covers thirty years of the couple’s affair, even after one of them has passed on. We alternate between Adele’s and Saint-Beuve’s voices, witnessing their struggles to be together from both sides. Adele, obviously, cannot leave her husband, who grows increasingly famous, particularly because of her children, while Saint-Beuve struggles to become the man he longs to be in Victor’s ever-present shadow.
I had actually never heard of the affair between Saint-Beuve and Adele, but since reading this book have really come to realize that it was well known in its time and almost universally derided. Saint-Beuve in particular has borne the brunt of the ridicule, possibly because he was actually a hermaphrodite.
This makes for a very interesting book, but instead of making it seem at all vulgar or strange, Humphreys weaves it into his personality and makes his cross-dressing and his confusion sexually just another aspect of him, just like his desire to write is a part of him but does not define him. I thought this was an incredibly sensitive way to handle the subject and Humphreys does an extraordinary job, both with his personality and the way that Adele sees him and falls in love with him and is physically attracted to him despite things like cross-dressing which would immediately put off many straight women in the present.
Another aspect of the book that I really enjoyed, which I briefly alluded to above, is Saint-Beuve’s struggle to define himself. He virtually lives in Victor’s shadow – struggling to surpass Victor’s writing skills, falling in love with his wife, and even at times coveting Victor’s children. He tries so hard to set himself apart, but is all he really wants to be Victor. It’s a real struggle with individuality.
Humphreys is a beautiful writer and her words set nineteenth-century Paris alight. The atmosphere, especially when the couple are together, is wonderful and immediately grants us a sense of place.
A lovely, tender but sad read, The Reinvention of Love is the perfect choice for those who prefer their literary fiction set in the past with a whole heap of doomed romance.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free from Amazon Vine.
 Good afternoon Saloners! This weekend finds me in full force blogging mode, in a way that hasn’t been spotted around here for a while. I’ve managed to write two full weeks’ worth of posts this week, so the pressure is off for the first time in months. I still have four reviews left to write, but given I started the weekend with eleven, I’m counting that as serious progress. As long as I don’t read too much, I can finish off those reviews over the course of the week and be completely caught up by the end of next weekend. Then, obviously, the goal is to stay caught up until the Read-a-thon. Speaking of which, have you signed up yet? Let me know if you’ll also be reading with me!
My week has been very uneventful aside from that; just work, a moderate amount of reading, and some Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood keeping me busy. We’re just over two weeks away from our trip to Rome, so keeping it low key is the plan until then. I’m going to spend a large part of the next two weekends planning out the trip in a bit more detail and it’s hard to express just how much I’m looking forward to it.
 Today I’m reading Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell, the latest in the Saxon Chronicles, which follow Uhtred of Bebbanburg as the discordant countries of Britain become, in part, the kingdom of England. In this particular book, Alfred the Great is on the edge of death, but the battles and intrigue never end for Uhtred, especially because he hasn’t actually regained Bebbanburg from his treacherous relatives yet. I love this series and I was thrilled when I was offered a review copy. As it turns out, Cornwell is also touring parts of England this week. Sadly, he’s not in my neck of the woods, but if you’re in London, Ely, or Winchester, you’re in luck.
As it turned out, I didn’t get to meet Philippa Gregory this week, as tickets had sold out before I knew she was visiting. (Probably a good thing given my opinion of her latest). But my heart is still set on meeting Brandon Sanderson in November, and I’m hoping more authors come to York over the next few months.
This week I’m especially looking forward to starting The Night Circus, a book which has captivated many of my blogging friends, and possibly continuing with more non-fiction. I finally feel as though I have the brain power to learn again, and I’m very much taking advantage of that feeling while it lasts.
What are you reading this week? Anything you’d recommend?
 Maria Antonia is only a young girl when she’s informed that she is to be the bride of the future King of France – if she can get up to scratch, that is. She quite distinctly must become Marie Antoinette, a woman capable of being Queen of France, with the bearing, appearance, accent, and knowledge that any queen needs. She is melded to progress her family’s agenda, then sent to a brand new country to meet a completely new family, as though her life in Austria never existed. This first installment of a new trilogy fictionalizing Marie Antoinette’s life truly does describe how she became the queen remembered throughout history.
Grey’s novel takes on the life of Marie Antoinette somewhat earlier than other books do and appears to be really taking an exhaustive look at her. I’d never before read about her struggles to actually be accepted as the appropriate wife of the Dauphin; it must have been hard for any young girl to be judged wanting so very much by her future family. She endures extra lessons, surgery on her teeth, and is constantly inspected for improvements.
As you might expect, then, Grey’s Marie Antoinette is a very sympathetic girl. She’s used to the relative flexibility of the Austrian court, even with her strict mother, and the laxness of her tutors who will falsify her results rather than force her to actually learn. Preparing to enter the French court – and then actually doing so – is a rather unpleasant revelation, and we can feel for the girl who has lost everything familiar to her.
Marie Antoinette’s relative innocence navigating the court in France continues, even as she is forced to seduce her own husband by order of her mother. She must become pregnant to solidify her family’s position and to provide an heir to the throne, but her husband is reticent for reasons mysterious to her. The poor girl is not only in an unfamiliar court, confused by the immorality around her, but is also rejected by the one she hoped would treat her well.
If you’re looking at a very sympathetic look at Marie Antoinette, you could hardly go wrong with this one. It’s also very well written, with fantastic descriptions of life in Vienna and Versailles. Grey has done quite a bit of research, as she explains in her author’s note, and almost everything she uses is true to history. She does an excellent job of matching the personalities of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, who both mainly just wanted to escape from their duties and be normal – a tragic story for those who know what is coming.
While I’ve read the story of Marie Antoinette’s life before, I found myself very much enjoying Becoming Marie Antoinette and looking forward to the next volumes. The author’s treatment of a familiar story is well done, and will have the most reluctant reader feeling very much for a young girl cast adrift in an unfamiliar world.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
 It only takes a minute for Emmy’s life to flip upside down; her baby, the spot of joy in her life, stolen, her husband accusing her of the crime. After she goes on a frantic search, Emmy ends up in a mental hospital, longing for her stolen daughter and for justice. In the present day, fourteen-year-old Sophie is hidden from the world, forbidden to do so much as leave her house. She and her mother have constantly been hiding, but Sophie has never understood why. When she befriends her neighbor, a boy called Joey, Sophie begins to put the pieces of her life together and wonder. Told in alternating chapters between the two women, You Are My Only is the story of a mother’s love and a daughter’s longing.
Beth Kephart is a beautiful writer; I first experienced her wonderful style in Nothing But Ghosts and I’ve been looking forward to another read since. She has the incredible talent of getting right to the heart of human emotion and expressing it through her prose while telling a story. Some of the imagery is simply stunning, causing me to go back and read over again just to savor the beauty of the words. As you might expect, then, the point of this book is not the plot, though; it’s easy to see from the outset what exactly has happened.
Instead the book is a slow discovery, watching the characters, especially Sophie, work out what’s happened and how their lives have become like this. It’s also very much a tale about motherhood. Each of the adult women is a mother in different ways – Emmy, whose daughter has been stolen; Sophie’s mother, who craved a child; Joey’s aunts, who are perhaps the most traditionally “motherly” characters in the book despite their somewhat unconventional life. And in the center is Sophie, seeking a vision of motherhood she hasn’t had, and an opportunity to escape the stifling confines of her house and enjoy the life of an ordinary young girl. All of the characters are seeking something, and the heart of the book lies in whether or not they find it, and how they go about looking for it.
I do believe Kephart’s works should be read much more widely, and this wouldn’t be a bad place to start for any reader. Her books are lovely, evocative and full of pure emotion. I’d recommend both this and Nothing But Ghosts, and I’m very much looking forward to reading more of her work.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
Our next stop was the lovely small city of Bruges. It’s a place I’ve decided to call Disney World for medievalists. Just walking around is amazing with the number of old, medieval buildings, but all the time you’re aware that the city has been restored and cleaned up just for tourists. Doesn’t make the experience any less amazing, although I’m not a huge fan of the many horse-drawn carriages that others seem to delight in.
Anyway! Walking into town, approaching the Markt, the sights begin:
We visited a house that gave refuge to Edward IV and Charles II, both kings of England:
And a gorgeous church, where we saw Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child:
One thing I noticed is that churches in Bruges tended to be very colorful, with paintings and decorations everywhere. It was in stark contract to the churches we saw in Amsterdam and those I’m familiar with here in England, which are still beautiful but very austere. I know they used to be colorful (at least in England) so I’m sure that has something to do with the Protestantism of both the Netherlands and the UK, but it was still very cool to see what churches look like with all that decoration.
The city is also simply gorgeous to walk around, with canals and parks and beautiful buildings everywhere (many of them emanating the smell of chocolate):
We also decided to spoil ourselves just a tiny bit because my part of the trip was almost over:
Unsurprisingly, I am definitely planning to go back. Bruges was just a nice place to spend some time. If I ever look for a relaxing weekend away in a gorgeous setting, I know exactly where to go.
 A fantasy classic, The Last Unicorn describes the decline of the unicorns and the struggle for the last one to find her comrades after leaving her forest home – only to discover that she is now horribly alone. Convinced that her fellow unicorns actually do still exist, she embroils herself in bad situation after bad situation, though not without non-unicorn friends, while looking for elusive companionship.
I was absolutely thrilled when I stumbled upon a copy of this book while I was in the US in July. I had intended to buy a copy online at some point, so the serendipity of it appearing before me in a physical bookstore was plenty to persuade me to buy it and read it shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, it then took me over a month (!) to review it, so I’m afraid some of the details have been lost. But I’ll try and capture some of the essence of this magical book.
Half of its appeal for me was simply the way it was written; it struck as immediately a bit old-fashioned, the kind of fairy tale my mother might have read growing up. That’s probably because she could have as the book was published during her childhood, in 1968. The unicorn is beautiful but slightly terrifying in its beauty, kind of reminding me of Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings. Fantasy is a thing of awe, not something we can weave into modern life so much like in today’s urban fantasy; it’s distinctly medievalesque with castles, magicians, and lovelorn princes. It feels like proper, epic fantasy, despite its very short length. And though the characters sound like stereotypes, Beagle makes sure they don’t stay that way, weaving in personalities and little traits that make us grow to care about them.
The story itself also has an old-fashioned feel about it. Rather than pure action, much of the story is determined by fate and the way things have to be, rather than pure decision-making on behalf of the characters. Sure, they make some decisions; the unicorn chooses to venture out once she’s heard that there are no more unicorns, and Schmendrick chooses to help her at some stage along the way.
But a lot of the book simply flows along, inviting the reader to linger in the beauty of it rather than causing suspense even though the storyline actually does have a few cliffhangers and tense moments. Much of this is due to the absolute loveliness of Beagle’s writing, the way he describes the magic as though it could be real, and his descriptions. He creates an entire world in the space of a few pages – a true feat.
A proper work of fantasy, that immerses you into a world that you can almost believe in, The Last Unicorn is a classic that deserves to be read more often.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I bought this book.
 From the first videogame to the graphics-intense shooters of the present day, using computers and consoles to play games has a long and fascinating history. Rather than try and cover all of this history, Goldberg focuses on snapshots in time, targeting specific games that changed the industry, pushed it to develop, and / or that succeeded against all the odds. Because it’s so wide, he covers everything from vacuum-tube computers to arcade games to handheld systems, picking and choosing which games to spotlight as he attempts to capture just what inspires us about gaming.
By the author’s choice of title, he’s captured the interest of anyone who has been a video game nerd in the last two decades. “All Your Base are Belong to Us” is a well-known translation error from the game Zero Wing which has taken on a life of its own amongst gamers (as you’ll see in the link above). Because it so clearly caters to me and other gamers like me, I was predisposed to enjoy this book, and enjoy it I did. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the title within the text, which I think will actually confuse people who have a more general knowledge of gaming, and who may actually enjoy this book the most.
Goldberg chooses some interesting moments in gaming, some of which I knew about previously and some of which I didn’t. Games like Pong, Myst, and Bioshock make an appearance, with their creation stories alongside Goldberg’s analysis of how and why they changed gaming. Goldberg is obviously a gamer himself and is able to easily recreate the feelings that make gaming so much fun through his writing. He has interviewed legions of personalities who featured in the games’ creation, adding primary source material to each chapter with his own commentary.
It’s a bit of an uneven book, though, simply by its very nature. He has left out games that had their own significant influence on the industry, because he only has a limited amount of space in this short book, and as a result it’s actually difficult to grasp the entire picture. It’s not really a history of video games either, it’s more a chatty selection of some games that influenced their development as a whole, a journey through interviews with some vibrant gaming personalities. There are some really excellent chapters in here, but I just didn’t feel at the end like Goldberg had achieved his goal of exploring why video games have such an effect on us.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us is a fun read, perfect for someone who wants a skimmable look into gaming history, but it doesn’t achieve quite the depth I’d hoped for. I’m still looking for the perfect history of the gaming industry, or books which focus on different sectors, and am very happy to take suggestions.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free from Amazon Vine.
Hello everyone and happy Sunday! Before I say anything else, I really want to thank everyone who went and voted for me for Best Historical Fiction Blog for BBAW. It’s such an honour to win again – I won last year and in 2008 – and I’m so pleased. The blogs nominated with me, Passages to the Past and Historical Tapestry, are absolutely spectacular blogs that I read myself, which to be honest makes the award worth even more in my eyes.
 If you’re new and popping by because of BBAW, welcome! As you’ll quickly realize, I don’t just blog about Historical Fiction, but history and the books written about it are a subject dear to my heart, and were always intended to be at the core of this blog. Please stay awhile, let me know you’re here, and I’ll make sure I pop over and visit you.
It’s really been a fantastic week, so I’d like to thank Amy and all of the organizers – they have as usual done an exceptional job.
What I’m struggling with these days is my reading pace – it feels slow as molasses! I’m actually at the pace I thought would be normal when I started working, which is 2-3 books a week instead of the 4-5 I used to read. This is due to a number of factors – extra work, which has continued, a new-found addiction to various nerdy magazines, and spending in general more time out and about now that we’re in York. I can’t complain about any of those things, and I’m obviously enjoying at least two of them, but I find myself confident I’ll read a certain book by a certain time only to find out that it’s actually impossible. I’m not sure how to manage this – I think I may just cut back on review copies completely again, but that won’t clear the backlog.
 Anyway, this week is going to be full of posting, so I hope you’re ready for it! I’ll be sharing reviews of all different kinds of books, from fantasy to YA to (hah) historical fiction, and I also plan to share some of my trip to Bruges with you.
In reading terms, today I’m working on finishing The Emperor of All Maladies, which is fantastic but really hard to read because of the subject matter. I’m also planning on starting Philippa Gregory’s recent works for review the week after – I’ll be starting with The Women of the Cousin’s War. She’s coming to town on Thursday and I’m hoping there will still be tickets left when I enquire on Monday.
I also found out Brandon Sanderson is coming to York in November through Twitter, at which point much fangirl squeeing ensued. I’m not entirely sure how I will get into town and back on my lunch hour, but I’m determined to try. I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally live in a place where author events happen.
I’m also looking forward to the resuming of Downton Abbey tonight on TV!
What do you have planned for the week ahead? I hope you have a fantastic Sunday!
 Like many people, I couldn’t resist today’s prompt …
Book bloggers blog because we love reading. Has book blogging changed the way you read? Have you discovered books you never would have apart from book blogging? How has book blogging affected your book acquisition habits? Have you made new connections with other readers because of book blogging? Choose any one of these topics and share your thoughts today!
Book blogging has completely changed the way I read – not just blogging, but other bloggers too. I still remember how I actually once struggled to discover new books to read (I know, I can’t believe it any more either) and now I’m buried under an avalanche of TBR books. I used to have a stack of books as high as my bed, and now I have a bookcase full of unread books in one country and a second in another. I have over 500 books and it’s safe to say I’d be happy to be reading any of them right now.
Now, with other bloggers to guide me in new directions, I have discovered a ridiculous number of books I want to read. I’ve branched out, into sci-fi, memoirs, travelogues, urban fantasy, and so much more. With review copies in hand, particularly with Netgalley, I can read more current releases than ever, and if I try, feel part of the conversation. Before blogging, I didn’t know the conversation existed.
It’s also changed the way I actually read, in that I think about books more than I ever could before. I often start phrasing my review while actually still reading, deciding certain aspects I’ll point out that I either enjoyed or disliked. I also love that I can go back to my reviews – especially if I’m reading a series – and remember how I felt about previous books. I often forgot, except for a vague “like” or “didn’t like” vibe. Now, I never have to worry about it, as long as I’m up on my reviews that is.
I can also say that I read tons more than I used to. Even if I turn out reading less this year than last year (which is almost a certainty), I still read twice as much as I read in 2006, before I got involved in any online book communities. I read faster, and I think I read more deeply. All good, and all thanks to blogging.
Has your reading changed due to blogging?
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